Sunday, August 20, 2017

Accept – The Rise of Chaos

Accept is now four albums into their latest
reunion, and really have nothing to prove anymore. They’ve hit the mark of
consistency achieved by bands like Tankard, Overkill, and others. If you’ve
heard any of their other recent records, “The Rise of Chaos” will be a fairly
predictable affair. That isn’t a bad thing though, as it is once again filled
with hard rockin’ tracks. The band continues to have an amped-up, Judas Priest
meets AC/DC feel (the former due to the riffs and the latter due to the
vocals). The pleasant surprise of “The Rise of Chaos” is that it’s much more
succinct than their other 3 reunion albums, clocking in at just 46 minutes. Though
Accept are strong songwriters, even they struggle to maintain the hour or so length
that has dominated their music recently.

As seasoned veterans, Accept write songs
that are instantly memorable. Even when the song itself might not be that
great, you’ll probably have it stuck in your head. The lone instance of this on
“The Rise of Chaos” is “Hole In The Head”, which has an awkward chorus, amidst
an otherwise acceptable tune. The real highlights are tracks like the
high-energy opener “Die By The Sword”, and the incredibly melodic “Koolaid”. Wolf
Hoffmann continues to dominate throughout the record, primarily due to his
unlimited arsenal of traditional heavy metal riffs, but he also has plenty of
great leads as well. There is plenty of variety in terms of speed; the album
obviously leans towards more upbeat tempos, but there is the occasional
slow-burner like “Analog Man” that offers a nice change of pace.

As the album soldiers on, there really
aren’t many surprises. The band still has plenty of great gang-vocal parts that
are perfect to sing along to. The riffs are fairly standard, but none of them
feel unoriginal. Despite decades of writing this type of music, Accept somehow
manages to avoid rehashing the past (or any of the other thousands of other
similar sounding bands out there). Overall, it’s easy to be happy with “The
Rise of Chaos” as it is definitely on par with everything else the band has done
in the last decade, and even exceeds much of it!